(HealthDayNews) -- If you're planning to engage in winter sports, take your mittens, boots ... and your pillow.
That's because you really need a good night's sleep before you venture into the cold.
Journal of Applied Physiology reports that sleep deprivation not only leaves your mind dull, you're less able to cope with the effects of cold temperatures. After being deprived of sleep, study subjects couldn't raise their metabolic heat production as much as they needed to in order to respond to cold. This increases the risk of hypothermia.
Recovery began after two nights of normal sleep, but it took months before the ability to adjust metabolic rate to cold temperatures got completely back to normal.
